Workshop 2 and Specialized Course

Parliamentarians, Candidates and Elections in Eastern Europe: From Theory to Empirics

March 18, 2014

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology

Polish Academy of Sciences

Warsaw, Poland

This one day workshop and specialized course, which is organized with Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program (CONSIRT), will be held in Warsaw, at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, on Tuesday, March 18, 2014. In this website you can find the final report from this event as well as the project overview and discussions.

A sequel to Workshop 1, this international workshop and specialized course brings together scholars who are interested in using the Eastern European Parliamentarian and Candidate Database (EAST-PaC data) on parliamentarians, candidates and elections in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Romania. These data are designed to address critical questions on political and party systems of the region, as well as issues in representation, accountability and political inequality.

Workshop 2 and specialized course will feature (a) training in the EAST-PaC data collection effort in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Romania and (b) discussions of moving from research ideas to manageable research projects and publications involving the analyses of these data.

Participants will briefly present to their Workshop and specialized course colleagues a preliminary plan for a research article featuring the analyses of EAST-PaC data. In this presentation, participants will outline the research questions they would like to address, the country or countries in the EAST-PaC data they would like to analyze, and a sketch of the methodological issues involved in addressing their research questions. The Workshop and specialized course organizers encourage participants to be creative in their approach to the theories and empirics — including the possibility of merging EAST-PaC with other data — and to be open minded with regard to suggestions from fellow Workshop and specialized course colleagues on the possible directions of the research project. The purpose is to generate ideas that can be turned into manageable and publishable research products.

This one-day event will include discussions of the Electoral Control project in progress, including data collection and generating research ideas for the purpose of creating publishable research products. Contrary to what we read in textbooks, that science proceeds cleanly and easily from idea to product, the reality is that science proceeds in a more iterative fashion, constantly creating, modifying, discarding and generating new research ideas through trial and error. Social science is no different. In fact, projects such as this — on electoral control in Eastern Europe — are especially susceptible to this “messy” process because they directly engage with a region undergoing radical social change. This is a great opportunity for PhD students to witness, first hand, the inner workings of a research project and its administration. Thus, the Workshop will also function as a Specialized Course for PhD students in how social scientists generate ideas and manage cross-national research projects. As such, we will invite PhD students from the Graduate School for Social Research to be part of the one-day proceedings. Attending the Specialized Course, like the Workshop, is free of charge, but to attend students must first contact the organizer.

This event is funded by a grant from Poland’s National Science Centre and with additional support from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences and the Graduate School for Social Research (GSSR), and organizational support from Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program (CONSIRT).